I suppose this falls into the category of "stupid tricks" but I
still find it useful sometimes. I created a simple alias
called vid
, which I use to create and edit a file
with a date as part of the filename.

I find it handy for repetitive reports and memos.

The alias looks like this:

alias vid "vi \!:1.`date +%m.%d`"

and given an argument like memo
or status
, appends the date
as an extension. Using wildcards, I can then list all my memos
of a particular date or a particular subject: